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Thursday, July 07, 2011

The US Liar's Club in Washington

The arrogance of our rulers and masters; their cynical contempt is endless. They either think we are stupid or perhaps they know something. Yesterday, the Affirmed POTUS tweeted, but Obama could not comply with a symbol limit , no more than he can with debt limits or any other restraint involving truth, letters or numbers, but Obama is no ordinary mortal. He is a half-breed with the gods:
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WASHINGTON — So much for 140 characters or less. A president, it seems, gets to respond to a tweet on his own terms.

President Barack Obama got an avalanche of questions on Wednesday at a town hall forum through Twitter, the popular social media service. Of the many thousands that streamed in, he answered 18 in a familiar, spoken explanatory style that well-exceeded the limited length of a tweet.

Obama's first answer, to a question on mistakes made in handling the recession, was relatively short by his standards. It still amounted to about 2,300 characters — 2,160 longer than a tweet can be.

"I know, Twitter, I'm supposed to be short," Obama conceded in the midst of another multilayered response about college costs.

The White House had warned this might happen.

"He's the leader of the free world," presidential spokesman Jay Carney said. "He decides how short his answers will be."

The embattled head of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has told congressional investigators that some Mexican drug cartel figures targeted by his agency in a gun-trafficking investigation were paid informants for the FBI

It would not be foolish to think that the "big money" is not waiting for a "better" candidate from the GOP.

Indeed it may just be that the "big money" is betting that they should not waste it, in a lost cause.

That they'd be better off investing off shore.

Maybe they know John Galt?

The Republican presidential fundraising reports are still coming in, but a clear winner has already emerged: Barack Obama. Whoever claims the GOP nomination is going to find it close to impossible to keep pace with the president's fundraising ...

The big deficit facing the U.S. is mostly Republican in origin, the Congressional Budget Office says. The Bush tax cuts alone have added $3 trillion in red ink, yet the party wants to double down on its failed policy.

The failure of our leaders to offer realistic budget proposals was a major reason I decided to retire after 28 years in Congress, most of them as a professional staff member on the Republican side of both the House and Senate Budget Committees. My party talks a good game, railing about the immorality of passing debt on to our children. But the same Congressional Budget Office that punctured Obama's budget also concluded that the major policies that swung the budget from a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion in 2001 to the present 10-year deficit of $6.2 trillion were Republican in origin.

Consider the two signature GOP policies of George W. Bush's presidency: the wars and the tax cuts. Including debt service costs, Bush's wars have cost about $1.7 trillion to date. Additionally, as part of being "a nation at war," the Pentagon has spent about $1 trillion more than was expected in the last decade on things other than direct war costs, which has been a bonanza for military contractors but a disaster for the federal budget. And finally, there has been another trillion dollars spent domestically in response to 9/11, including spending on such things as establishing the Homeland Security Department and increasing the budgets for the State Department and the Veterans Administration.

The Bush tax cuts have added another $3 trillion in red ink. While Republican leaders wail that Americans — particularly their rich contributors — are overtaxed, the facts say otherwise: U.S. taxpayers, particularly the wealthiest, pay far less in taxes than they would in most other developed countries. Today, the 400 wealthiest Americans have as much wealth as the bottom 125 million. The GOP insists that those wealthy people use their money to create jobs, and that taxing them more heavily would ultimately hurt the economy. But, if that's so, why was the rate of job creation in the decade after the Bush tax cuts the poorest in any decade since before World War II?

U.S. and Mexican officials signed an agreement Wednesday allowing each country's trucks to traverse the other's highways, implementing a key provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement after nearly two decades of bickering.

Transportation secretaries Ray LaHood and Dionisio Perez-Jacome signed the three-year memorandum, which is based on an agreement announced in March by Presidents Obama and Felipe Calderon.

NAFTA, signed in 1994, had called for Mexican trucks to have unrestricted access to highways in border states by 1995 and full access to all U.S. highways by January 2000. Canadian trucks have no limits on where they can go.

But until now, Mexican trucks have seldom been allowed farther than a buffer zone on the U.S. side of the border. In retaliation, Mexico had imposed higher tariffs on dozens of U.S. products.

The Mexican government has now agreed to suspend those tariffs as long as the agreement is in place.

Recently dubbed the “Trial of the Century”, the prosecution of Florida mom Casey Anthony for the murder of her toddler daughter, Caylee, could more aptly be called the Trial of the Absurd. The prosecution seems desperate to prove Anthony’s innocence while the defense can’t manage a single reference to the evidence that actually proves Casey did not kill her child.

4. Why is the docket sheet in the case under seal? It would show what motions were filed to “seal” certain evidence. It would also show that the case has been designated a sex crime prosecution – which is important given that a sex crimes detective was involved in the early stages of the investigation. Why?

5. Casey searched the internet to learn how to make chloroform; a substance commonly used to sedate children in the making of child porn. The public thinks Casey used chloroform to kill her child, but the drug is popular among parents who pimp their kids because it’s cheap and it causes amnesia so that victims can’t remember being abused.

Pimping kids is dangerous business and Casey apparently made someone very angry. Maybe she cut out an earlier “business” partner or ripped someone off. A “Zenaida Gonzales” reported her laptop stolen in early June.

The distortion of truth in this strange case will lead to Casey’s acquittal, which begs the real question: will the prosecution then have the guts, and the political will, to file new charges against Casey for what she REALLY did to that poor little girl.

No, Doug; it's not that simple. I'm not saying all of the tax accounting benefits enjoyed by small drillers should be done away with, but they can have some unintended consequences. It really gets too complex for a short discussion at the Elephant Bar (or, virtually, Any blog, for that matter.)

In addition, don't forget that, all but the very largest companies, still have the Oil Depletion Allowance. No other business in America has anything like that.

Of course, The Huge Tax Break that the Biggest Companies get is allowing them to pass of "royalties" paid to foreign governments as "Income Tax." That loophole is Monstrous. No Other Industry gets anything like that.

Then, there is that $13 Billion we gave them to drill in the Gulf.

Don't worry about the oil companies, Doug. They are Really, Really Good at taking care of themselves.

The Deal is Done. Ethanol Tax Credit, and Import Tariff is history as of July 31.

The source, who is an aide to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said the agreement was reached today between Feinstein and Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and John Thune, R-S.D., to repeal the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit, also known as the blender's credit, at the current level of 45 cents per gallon and a 54-cents-per-gallon tariff on imported ethanol.

The Supreme Court found, in 1960, made it clear that FICA is just an income tax, plain and simple.

That both political parties lie about the ruling in Fleming v Nestor, well, what else would one expect.

THE PROGRAM IS FINANCED THROUGH A PAYROLL TAX LEVIED ON EMPLOYEES IN COVERED EMPLOYMENT, AND ON THEIR EMPLOYERS. THE TAX RATE, WHICH IS A FIXED PERCENTAGE OF THE FIRST $4,800 OF EMPLOYEE ANNUAL INCOME, IS SET AT A SCALE WHICH WILL INCREASE FROM YEAR TO YEAR, PRESUMABLY TO KEEP PACE WITH RISING BENEFIT COSTS. I.R.C. OF 1954, SECS. 3101, 3111, 3121(A).

THE TAX PROCEEDS ARE PAID INTO THE TREASURY "AS INTERNAL REVENUE COLLECTIONS," I.R.C., SEC. 3501, AND EACH YEAR AN AMOUNT EQUALTO THE PROCEEDS IS APPROPRIATED TO A TRUST FUND, FROM WHICH BENEFITSAND THE EXPENSES OF THE PROGRAM ARE PAID.

There are no "ACCRUED PROPERTY RIGHTS" to Social Security.

The FICA taxes are just an income tax. There is no "surplus", as long as the Federals run any deficit, at all.

TO ENGRAFT UPON THE SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM A CONCEPT OF "ACCRUED PROPERTY RIGHTS" WOULD DEPRIVE IT OF THE FLEXIBILITY AND BOLDNESS IN ADJUSTMENT TO EVER-CHANGING CONDITIONS WHICH IT DEMANDS AND WHICH CONGRESS PROBABLY HAD IN MIND WHEN IT EXPRESSLY RESERVED THE RIGHT TO ALTER, AMEND OR REPEAL ANY PROVISION OF THE ACT.

Remind me not to rape and murder a teenager the next time I go to Central America. Obama is worried about it. He never stops caring does he?

HUNTSVILLE (AP) — The planned execution Thursday of a Mexican national has prompted a flurry of appeals on his behalf, including a rare plea from the White House, because of what it could mean for other foreigners arrested in the U.S. and for Americans detained in other countries.

Humberto Leal, 38, is awaiting a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on whether to block his lethal injection in Huntsville. He was sentenced to die for the 1994 rape and murder of 16-year-old Adria Sauceda of San Antonio.

On my Census form there is a question “Do youhave any dependants?” Apparently putting “Hundreds of fuckingAfricans, Pakis, Somalians, single mums, Romanians, loafers, smackheads and non English speaking people” isn’t the right answer. They’vesent my form back!

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.